Tape Mani Thursday!

Goooood evening lovelies!

I hope you are all having a great week. We're almost to the weekend and Christmas. My next post after this one will be on Christmas Eve! I'm so excited to spend time with family and open presents :)

Tonight, I have a really quick, really sparkly mani for you. I don't know if Tape Mani Thursday will become a thing but this manicure is a great starting point!

I recently joined the Julep Maven program and I love it. I did the free box offer and my style quiz showed that I was an "It Girl," which is fitting ;)

I loved it so much that did December's box, but in Boho Glam.

If you are unfamiliar with the Julep Maven program, I'll give you a little rundown.

For about $20 a month, you get up to three polishes, depending on your style profile. The boxes to choose from are It Girl, Boho Glam, Bombshell, Classic With A Twist, and Modern Beauty. If you don't like your style profile's box for the month, they give you an option to choose one of the other boxes, or you can skip the month entirely. Isn't that awesome?!

If you're interested in joining from just that description, you can join up here.

Now, onto the polishes!

 In the Boho Glam box, there were two polishes and a neutral eyeshadow palette. Plus, they threw in two twistband hair ties, which I love.

For this mani, I started with my usual Orly Nail Armor base coat and then three coats of Julep Misti

Misti is a dusty teal green. It reminds me of the Atlantic Ocean.

The formula was decent on this. Because of the shape of the Julep polish bottles, you really have to make sure that you wipe the brush off on the mouth of the bottle so you don't get too much on your brush. Other than that--three coats and you're good.

I topcoated this with Beauty Plus Salon top coat.

After that dried, I took my roll of striping tape and made X's on each finger and took a thin nail art brush with Julep Joelle to make sure that I got my points exact.

Joelle is just gorgeous. Holo microglitter and slightly larger silver glitters, suspended in a clear base. It just sparkles at any angle. It's a great glitter for the holidays!

I can't wait to see what Julep has in store for next month!

What you do think about this simple, sparkly mani?

Tell me about it!

xo, ali

Bundle Monster Strikes Again!

Hello, hello! Happy Tuesday! I hope you all had a great weekend and are getting ready for Christmas. We got dumped on by the dreaded lake effect snow, over the weekend, and it just doesn't seem to stop snowing! I'd like one morning where I don't have to clear my car off before work!

Tonight, I have a quick stamping mani that I put together last week.

I started with base coat and three coats of Color Club Lavendarling, from the Blossoming collection that came out in Spring 2012. 

Man, my pinky has other plans than to line up right!

Anyways.

Lavendarling is a dusty purple cream, almost a grape purple. The first two coats were riddled with streaks and bald spots but once I calmed down and slowed down, the third coat evened everything out. After top coating, I used Sephora by OPI Just A Little Dangerous and BM 408 from the 2013 Create Your Own plate collection.

SOPI Just A Little Dangerous is a gorgeous red-toned dark purple, shot through with purple shimmer.

I picked it up from Sephora when all of their in-house OPI polishes were on clearance to make way for the new Sephora X Polish line.

This polish stamped insanely well! Any bald spots in the stamp are from user error. I just can't say enough good things about this collection of stamping plates from Bundle Monster. The designs are so unique and etched to the perfect depth. I love how this pattern mimics a crazy glitter-bomb that have been put out by a lot of indie polish creators this year. Removal was much easier, too ;)

Did you pick up any polishes from Sephora's epic polish clearance? What's been your favorite polish-related release of the past year? I'd love to hear about it, in the comments!

Until next time!

xo, ali.

She's always buzzin just like neon, neon

Good evening, lovelies!

I have a super-duper quick post for you tonight. This was for the Facebook group, Adventures in Stamping. I recently joined the group and followed their theme of a jelly sandwich with stamping. 

For this mani, I did base coat followed by two coats of Wet N Wild Wild Shine Vengeful Bride, which was out around Halloween times. I picked it up for .99 with two other colors from the collection.

After top coating with my trusty Beauty Plus Salon quick-dry, I stamped using an H&M white polish and Bundle Monster plate 409 from the CYO 2013 collection. More top coat and another coat of Vengeful Bride and a final layer of top coat completed the mani. 

I loved how bright this was. Perfect to perk up these December days in Buffalo. Despite this being a neon, this is pretty color accurate but it does dry to a satin/matte finish so top coat is needed to give it a shiny finish.

What do you think? I'd love to hear what you have to say!

xo, ali.

Santa!!

Hello! Here I am, a week later. I have a good reason for my absence, last week-my sister and I went to see our favorite and hometown hockey team-the Buffalo Sabres-play the New York Rangers. It was a loss, as have been the majority of our games this season, but we had a great time. I'll share some pictures at the end of this post.

Now, for the real reason you're here--the polish. Tonight, I have a beauty for you ladies. I received this from my Hobby Polish Bloggers Secret Santa swap. Hobby Polish Bloggers is a great facebook group that is run by Stephanie from Imperfectly Painted (which is one of the first blogs I started reading, and is FABULOUS). She was an angel and organized a secret Santa swap for all of us. My gifter was the talented Erika from Icy Nails and she hooked me up. Check it out:

We've got a Christmas cat card, some yummyyy dark chocolates, OPI Make Him Mine, Alcatraz...Rocks!, Silent Stars Go By, and Swimsuit...Nailed It! We've also got some adoraaaable Rudolph socks and some awesome Clinique, Bumble and Bumble, Laura Mercier, OPI, and Clean samples in an adorable makeup bag.

I can't even begin to say how excited I was opening this last night. And to have my own bottle of Swimsuit...Nailed It!, well, that's so awesome!

The first polish I chose to break in was OPI Liquid Sand Make Him Mine. 

This is two coats, under artificial light.

Make Him Mine is a beautiful rose gold shimmer with larger silver hex glitters. My fingertips look like they've been gilded in rose gold and it's so SPARKLY. I honestly must have stopped what I was doing 20 times today to look at how sparkly my nails are. I absolutely love this color!! It will be a 2013 favorite for sure.

some rare Buffalo-in-December sunlight.

and my first try at a macro so you can see all the liquid sand goodness.

What have been your favorites, lately. Anything you've been dying over?

I'll be back later this week with an interesting stamping manicure that I tried a week ago and I'm interested to hear your thoughts. Plus, my first Ipsy Glam Bag is going to be arriving soon! I'll review that, as well.

Before I go, I'll share a couple of pictures from the Sabres game, last Thursday.

The Sabres have photographers taking pictures of fans as they come into the arena. This is me and my sister in our Sabres finery.

And, Sabretooth, our mascot, was nice enough to pose for a picture with me :)

This is from my Instagram. You can follow me there; my username is ali_golightly!

xo, ali

Mmm...Sangria!

Good Tuesday evening!

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving and were able to spend quality time with loved ones and get some great deals! I was able to accomplish all of that and only managed to end up with 3 bottles of nail polish for myself (on Friday, that is)!

Tonight, I have a GORGEOUS color for you, at a great price.

Lets get to it!

(with flash)

This is CoverGirl Outlast Glosstinis in Sangria.

(natural light-overcast)

(natural light-overcast)

Let's talk about this beautiful polish. I applied this at night-two easy coats over Orly Nail Armor, topped with one coat Beauty Plus Salon top coat and then the next day, one coat of NYC Grand Central Station. GCS is a HG (holy grail) topcoat for a lot of bloggers so I thought I'd try it out. The verdict is not in yet.

Anyways, Sangria is the perfect name for this polish because the color evokes balmy summer nights sipping the namesake drink on a patio with some of your girlfriends. It's a juicy reddish-pink with slight orange undertones, and it's shot through with a pearly shimmer. And it is SHINY! 

I may need a back up of this one. It wore for four days with minor tipwear and a few teeny chips. I wanted to take it off and put it right back on, which is a rarity! I can't believe I passed this over when the Glosstinis first came out over the summer.

I purchased my bottle at Ulta for $3.49 but these can be found at most big box stores like Target, Walmart, and KMart, as well as grocery stores (Wegmans or Tops if you're in the Buffalo, NY neck of the woods).

What has been a sleeper hit for you? What polishes are you lovin on lately?

I'm out of here because:

(source)

It's Tuesday and Supernatural is on.

Where are my Supernatural fangirls?!

xo, ali